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Study: Guns in home increase suicide, homicide risk

Stuart English of Milford, New Hampshire, sells antique guns at a gun show at the Crowne Plaza Hotel on Jan. 5, 2013, in Stamford, Conn. While other area gun shows were canceled following the shooting rampage that killed 20 first-graders and six teachers and administrators in Newtown, Conn., a gun show held by Westchester Collectors Inc. in Stamford, 30 miles from Newtown, proceeded as planned.
Christopher Capozziello/Getty Images

Study after study seems to point to a
similar conclusion: More guns mean more unnatural death.

A new survey in the Annals of Internal Medicine narrows down some of the causal relationship between guns and death by
finding conclusively that having a gun in your home makes you more likely to
successfully attempt suicide. The authors of the survey also found with a
lesser degree of certainty that people with guns in their home are more likely to
be the victims of a homicide.

The authors -- Andrew Anglemyer, PhD,
MPH; Tara Horvath, MA; and George Rutherford, MD -- came to a few common sense
conclusions, namely that firearms that are unlocked or loaded are more likely
to be used than those that are locked and not loaded, especially among
adolescent suicide victims.

However they also found that mental
illness does not make one more at risk of committing suicide or being killed by
a gun.

“The apparent increased risk for suicide
associated with firearms in the home … may be more of an indicator
of the ease of impulsive suicide,” the authors wrote. “Impulsiveness may be a
catalyst in using a firearm to commit suicide and may also play a role in
firearm-related homicide.”

Dr. David Hemenway of the Harvard School
of Public Health wrote in an editorial on the survey that the evidence is “overwhelming”
on the increased risk of successful suicide if there’s a gun in the home.
Hemenway also points to the increased risk of violence against women in particular.

“Bringing a gun into the home substantially
increases the risk for suicide for all family members and the risk for women
being murdered in the home,” Hemenway wrote. “Evidence not
included in their review also indicates that a gun in the home increases the
risk for homicide victimization for others in society. This increased risk may
be due to someone in the family shooting others (for example, the Sandy Hook
Elementary School shooting) or the gun being stolen and used by criminals.
Obtaining a firearm not only endangers those living in the home but also
imposes substantial costs on the community.”